


cold warmth

by malevon



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, living through a shipwreck will give you nightmares i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 20:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17494916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malevon/pseuds/malevon
Summary: just some post-shipwreck post-reunion h/c to unblock my writer brain. idk man it’s 1:30 AM





	cold warmth

Kharis was always cold. Maryn knew this.

It was a side effect of his magic. His body temperature felt like he was in a constant state of having just come inside from a windstorm. His arrival was always announced by the hairs on the back of her neck standing up and goosebumps appearing on her arms—Kharis walking into a room was like a gust of winter blowing in from a window carelessly left open.

It’s safe to say, then, that Maryn knew the normal range of his temperatures. The two of them adapted to this, most noticeably on nights when they had to share a bed in a modest inn room—Kharis would sleep on top of the bedspread wrapped in a separate blanket with his back to her, and Maryn wondered when this habit shifted from being just a tic to put as much space between them as possible to a matter of keeping her from shivering at night.

It had never been a problem, except now.

She wakes up and she’s shaking. Her first thought is that she had perhaps left some of the shutters open and it was simply some of the sea air creeping in, and as she turns to check the windows, her eyes bleary, she flinches away when her shoulder meets something _cold_ and _wet_. 

Maryn falls still. She has to calm her mind, her thoughts racing back and forth between the moments she spent thrashing helplessly in the cold ocean and the present. She grounds herself, focuses on her breaths, and above her own shivering she can feel Kharis’s, next to her. Kharis has never shivered before, she thinks, in a moment of clarity uncharacteristic of someone who was torn from sleep.

She understands, in that moment, and hums to herself, turning so that she’s facing his back. “No need for that,” she mutters, snaking one arm around his waist, the frost dusting his blanket melting under her touch. Her other arm she reaches up, her hand resting in his hair and loosely, sleepily toying with the strands she can reach. 

There she stays, against her body’s wishes to part herself from the cold—but as his shivering comes to a gradual end and his sleep is restful once more, Maryn revels in the cold warmth of his company and she, too, goes back to sleep.


End file.
